With the innovative development in the global navigation satellite system (GNSS) and growing consumer demands, the GNSS positioning has become a must-have feature in a wide range of the fast growing mobile devices, such as smartphones, tablets, personal navigation systems, and other consumer electronics devices. Consumers expect the GNSS positioning to be highly available with the least amount of power consumed. Improving the power consumption of the GNSS receiver is important for extending the battery life of the device with GNSS receiver.
The measurement engine (ME) unit in the GNSS receiver tracks satellite signals and executes satellite signal processing. The positioning engine (PE) unit executes the position calculation. The calculated results are provided to the user layer. The traditional way for power management in the GNSS receiver is performed by the duty cycle. Different ways are used to put the PE unit into sleep mode for a predefined number of duty cycles. While such methods provide ways to optimize the power consumption of the GNSS receiver, the optimization is not efficiency. It is bounded by the duty cycle of GNSS receiver and cannot be dynamically updated. The ME unit is not optimized. Unnecessary power consumption in the ME unit further reduces the power efficiency of the GNSS receiver.
Improvements and enhancements are needed for power saving operation arrangement of the GNSS signal processing and positioning task.